In this workshop, we are interested in exploring the role that computer scientists can play in making quantum computing a reality. We will introduce major themes in quantum computing research, including applications, error correction, compilation and optimization. We will then discuss some grand open challenges and ask what role computer science plays in optimizing the full software/hardware stack of quantum computers. No prior quantum computing knowledge is necessary to participate.

Workshop Details:

Quantum computing is at an inflection point, where 72-qubit (quantum bit) machines have been built, 100-qubit machines are just around the corner, and even 1000-qubit machines are perhaps only a few years away. These machines have the potential to fundamentally change our concept of what is computable and demonstrate practical applications in areas such as quantum chemistry, optimization, and quantum simulation.

Yet a significant resource gap remains between practical quantum algorithms and near-term machines. Software and architectures are what are needed to increase the efficiency of algorithms and machines and close this gap. There is a urgent shortage of the necessary computer scientists to work on closing this gap (there are over 60 public and private companies trying to hire in this area).

This workshop will outline the grand research challenges in closing this gap, including programming language design, software and hardware verification, defining and perforating abstraction boundaries, cross-layer optimization, managing parallelism and communication, mapping and scheduling computations, reducing control complexity, machine-specific optimizations, and many more. Some of these challenges can be approached with minimal quantum computing background and some will require greater depth.

We will introduce the basic concepts and resources to enable researchers to begin to delve into these challenges. We will also introduce quantum algorithms of near-term significance.

This workshop will be highly interactive. Participants will install our tools and work with code examples running on real quantum hardware at IBM, all organized within Jupyter notebooks, throughout the afternoon.

ORGANIZERS

Fred Chong (UChicago) -- co-author of the Scaffold compiler and simulation tools for quantum computing and a synthesis lecture on quantum computing for computer architects.

Ken Brown (Duke) -- Leading researcher in the control of quantum systems for both understanding the natural world and developing new technologies. His current research areas are the development of robust quantum computers and the study of molecular properties at cold and ultracold temperatures.